At 11:16 PM 4/8/04 +0200, privacy.at Anonymous Remailer wrote:

In the second place, it fails for elections with more than two parties running. The casual reference above to representatives "on each side" betrays this error. Poorly funded third parties cannot provide representatives as easily as the Republicans and Democrats. We already

know that the major parties fight to keep third party candidates off the ballots. Can we expect them to be vigilant in making sure that Libertarian and Green votes are counted?

Your points about the weaknesses of adversarial observers are stimulating, valid points, but the Reps and Dems *can* count on those votes *not* being moved into their de facto adversary's (Dems, Reps, respectively) bin. And in practice the fringe votes usually don't matter. (I vote Lib..) Its not uncommon for elections to be upheld *even when votes are known lost* if the margins are sufficient. (It happened in California last election, human error plus tech.) Ultimately the adversarial parties are the ones who have to check the whole process, including any tech that gets used. And that process is open to the Libs, etc. As to your other point, the clever protocols, Perry and other KISS advocates have a very strong (albeit social) point. Joe Sixpack can understand *and test* levers or Hollerith cards or their optical counterparts. Good luck getting him to understand number theory. It would be better in many estimations to have even coercible voting than to have "Trust Me" apply to electing a government. (Not that the govt will avoid using that phrase once elected :-)